I just received this bag from my mother in law, who is moving.  I’m thinking it is a hint, what about you?  :-D  I’ve never seen a 5-lb bag of baking cocoa!  I laughed when I saw this and this was the first thing I thought of.  I guess I’d better start making some cocoa-based dishes and (even better) desserts.

Apparently, over at Stahlbush, it is Marionberry harvest season.  I can tell because Rachel keeps bringing home Marionberries!  Today I felt like dessert so I turned up the oven and got out the mixing bowls.  Rachel found this really cool Oregon berry website with some great recipes.  The savory ones look particulary interesting and I think we’ll be trying them soon!  Today’s dessert used their Marionberry oat bar recipe.  These things smell so good!  Here’s what I did:

Ingredients for Filling:

• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 cups fresh or frozen Marrionberrys (look for Stahlbush’s Marionberrys in your health food section or store)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons corn starch

Ingredients for Crust:

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour (this is my contribution to the recipe)
• 1 cup packed brown sugar.
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 cups quick cooking rolled oats
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup melted butter (not my regular fare, but for this treat I had to add it!)

Directions for Filling:

1. Combine berries, sugar, cinnamon, water, lemon juice, and cornstarch in a sauce pan.
2. Bring to boil, then simmer until thickened

Directions for putting it together:

1. Mix flours, brown sugar, rolled oats, cinnamon, baking soda, and melted butter together
2. Press all but 1.5 cups of the mixture into the bottom of a 9×9x2 inch baking dish
3. Bake for 12 minutes on 350 degrees
4. Add the filling and smooth out on top
5. Add the remaining 1.5 cups on the mixture on top and press it lightly into the filling.
6. Bake again for 25 minutes
7. Let cool and serve

I hope you enjoy them!

I would like to welcome Mike Brindley, a co-worker and fellow food-lover.  He let me try some of this angel food cake and I have to say it was quite fluffy and delicious!  I hope you enjoy it! — Keith

I’ve always loved angel food cake; so light and airy. Years ago, I made it from a boxed mix, like my Mom did. Recently, I’ve seen some TV chefs make angel food from scratch and they emphasized how easy it was to make; that gave me the itch to try it for myself! But I didn’t have an angel food cake pan. So I decided to try it with loaf pans.

Angel food cake pans have three important features: the bottom and sides can be separated, so you can remove the cake, there is a hole/tube in the middle to help with baking, and they have “stand-offs” on the top so the cake can cool upside down (cooling upside down helps keep the cake from collapsing before the structure sets up during cooling). I had to improvise with the loaf pans to overcome the lack of these features.

I decided to use Alton Browns recipe from his show Good Eats. This recipe suggests using orange extract which I thought would go well with strawberries. Ina Garten has a very similar recipe using lemon zest, which also sounded good.

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cups sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup cake flour, sifted
• 12 egg whites (at room temperature)
• 1/3 cup warm water (just warm to the touch)
• 1 teaspoon orange extract, or extract of your choice
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit.

Remove eggs from refrigerator. Separate the eggs using the three bowl method (one to hold the yokes, one to hold the whites, and one to separate a single egg at a time). I actually lost one egg white to yolk contamination and had to throw it away, meaning that I used only 11 egg whites. Eggs are easier to separate when cold, but they are easier to beat when they are at room temperature, so separate the eggs first and allow them to warm up while you are working on the rest of the preparation.

Mr. Brown says that an angel food cake pan holds about 18 cups. My standard sized loaf pans hold 6 cups of water with a little room to spare. That means I need three loaf pans. As you can see in the picture above, the two pans on the right are old non-stick pans (silicone rubber coated steel) and the one on the left is tin-plated steel. Angel food cake needs to cling to the sides of the pan to help it rise to great heights, so pans are not greased for angel food cake. I wasn’t sure how the non-stick pans would do, but this is an experiment!

To allow removal of the cake from the pans, I cut a piece of parchment paper for the bottom of each pan. I put a few drops of vegetable oil in each pan first, to hold the parchment paper in place and to keep it from curling up. The “sticky” pan on the left has the largest piece of parchment - it went up the sides a little.

To help the sugar mix and dissolve, it needs to have smaller crystals. You can buy superfine sugar, but why stock such a specialty item when you can easily make it? Place the sugar in a food processor and whir for about 2 minutes. (You can probably do this in a blender, but you may need to do the sugar in several small batches.)

Sift half of the sugar with the salt and the cake flour, setting the rest of the sugar aside.

Now it’s time to beat the egg whites. If they aren’t already in the mixing bowl, place them there now. Add the water, extract, and cream of tartar. Mr. Brown recommends starting the egg beating with a hand whisk for a couple of minutes and then switching to a hand mixer. I used my stand mixer. I started it slowly and found that the cream of tarter tended to clump, so I stopped the mixer and used a hand whisk for a minute. I resumed beating with the stand mixer and ramped the speed to medium. Slowly sift in the reserved sugar, beating continuously at medium speed (this part would have been easier with the hand mixer, as my stand mixer doesn’t have much room for a sifter over the top of the bowl). Continue beating until you have reached medium peaks.

Now comes the folding. Remove the bowl of egg whites from the mixer. Sift enough of the flour mixture over the top of the egg whites to dust the top. Gently fold in the flour with a rubber spatula (cut down from the center, rotate spatula about 90 degrees so it will cut or slide, move the spatula across the bottom, lift up along the outside, and rotate to fold over). Rotate the bowl about 1/4 turn and repeat a couple of times until the dusting of flour mixture is pretty much incorporated.

Repeat the dust and fold steps until all the flour mixture is incorporated into the foam. Yes, this takes a few minutes. I may have over folded mine a little.

Carefully spoon the mixture into the prepared pans. As I filled the pans, it looked like two pans would be about right, so I didn’t fill the third pan. I might have used the third pan if I hadn’t been short one egg white.

The original recipe said to bake for 35 minutes. Since I was using two smaller pans, I thought I should cut the time to 30 minutes as using multiple pans generally means that they will cook faster.

About half way through cooking, I turned on the oven light and looked through the window. Both pans were puffed way up over the top of the pans! I had planned to cool the cakes by turning them upside down on a wire rack, but with the cake rising out of the pan, that wouldn’t work. Thinking quickly, I got out a couple of rimmed half sheet pans and a couple of wooded cutting boards. I put the sheet pans upside down on the counter and put one cutting board on top of each sheet pan. That looked like enough height. I separated the two “stands” to about the width of the loaf pans (long ways) so that the handles on the ends of the loaf pans would be supported and the cake would hang down into the open space between the “stands”.

(At this time, there was this wonderful aroma filling the kitchen. It was a little like a toasted marshmallow smell. Toward the end of the cooking time, the aroma changed and became less marshmallow like.)

At 30 minutes, I checked each cake by sticking a spaghetti strand down into the middle and noticed that it came out clean; the cakes were done!

I pulled the “sticky” pan out of the oven and carefully inverted it onto my stands, adjusting the stand spacing. When I got back to the open oven door, the non-stick pan was deflating back to about even with the height of the pan. Grimacing, I positioned the pan next to its companion. The deflated cake regained some of its lost height. Crossing my fingers, I let them cool for at least 1/2 hour.

I came back some time into the cooling time, and the cake in the “sticky” pan had fallen out of the pan! The sides were still stuck to the sides of the pan, but the rest of the cake had broken away from the layer on most of the sides. I let them both cool, and then turned them back upright. Some of the brown top had stuck to the counter, but the cake was still puffed up over the pans edge. It looked like it suffered a little compression.

After removing the cakes from the pans, I sliced the end off of each loaf. The non-stick pan loaf had deflated again, so that the top was flat. Both loaves had packet in bottom from (I assume) the parchment paper not allowing the cake to stick to the bottom during the inverted cooling.

Now for the tasting! Both loaves were quite tasty. The orange extract lent just a hint of orange flavor to the cake. The cake from the “sticky” pan was lighter and airier, but also was structurally weaker then the non-stick pan cake. All in all, I was happy with the results. They should make a good platform for strawberries and whipped cream.

Next time, I would recommend making sure that the parchment paper on the bottom of the loaf pans is slightly smaller than the bottom of the pan.

I had to come up with something to celebrate the holiday with and for some reason around the 4th of July my mouth waters for every cake I see with whole blueberries and strawberries on top.  This cupcake recipe was my answer!  I used the Strawberry cupcake recipe from last week and simply reduced the amount of strawberries and added whole blueberries to the batter.  Then to make it have all the red, white and blue flair I used whipped cream, whole blueberries and strawberries to top it off.  The result is a festive, decadent, delight that we got to share with some friends the other night.  Here’s what I did:

Ingredients for Cupcake:

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter
• 1 egg
• 6 ounces Homemade Applesauce
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• About 15 medium sized Stahlbush Island Farm’s Frozen Strawberries (thawed slightly) cut into quarters
• 5 oz whole, fresh or Stahlbush Island Farm frozen blueberries (thawed slightly)

Ingredients for Whipped Cream Frosting:

• 8 to 10 fluid oz Heavy Whipping Cream
• 2-3 tablespoons powdered sugar (more or less to your sweet toothe’s taste)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions for Cupcake:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
2. Beat sugar and butter together until fluffy
3. Add your egg and applesauce and mix thoroughly
4.  Mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl then add to your wet ingredients
5. Fold in strawberries and blueberries
6. Place in lined cupcake baking tins (I made about 14)
7. Bake for 20 minutes or so, until toothpick comes out clean

Directions for Real Whipped Cream Frosting:

1. Mix whipping cream, sugar and vanilla in a mixer
2. Beat until extra thick (but definitely stop before you make butter)

Put it all together by spreading real whipped cream on each cupcake.  Top with a whole strawberry and a bunch of whole thawed blueberries.

I’m still imagining myself sitting at Grandma’s table trying to eat these ribs before the meat fell off the bone.  They were the best ribs I’ve ever had.  No, I’ve never had ribs from the south, so maybe I’ve never officially had “ribs” — but these were GOOD!  They were juicy, tender, and like I said, the meat fell off the bone!

The secret wasn’t any special sauce or how long he let the ribs smoke.  No, the top secret “no-brainer” ingredient is beer!  Who can say “no” to beer?  Tom (Grandma’s husband) steams the ribs in beer for about 3 hours on the grill in a disposable roasting pan and then “paints” them directly on the grill just before serving.  The flavor the beer imparts depends on the beer you buy, but even the cheap stuff works — as Tom proved to us last weekend.  He called these his “no brainer” ribs because he gets to leave them all day long while he works on other projects around the house.

These ribs would be GREAT for a 4th of July (Independence Day, USA) celebration, a Labor day party or any occasion that calls for ribs.  Here’s what Tom did:

Ingredients (Feeds 4):

• 6 pounds of pork (or other) ribs
• 24 ounces of beer, cheap beer is fine
• 2 Disposable large roasting pans (like one you’d bake a turkey in)
• Grilling Sauce — homemade or store bought, it won’t matter!
• BBQ

Directions:

1. Thaw ribs if necessary, then rinse and cut into manageable pieces (2 or 3 ribs per section)
2. Place pieces curve side up in one roasting pan (so that each rib piece looks like a bridge) to prevent sticking
3. Pour beer over ribs and into the roasting pan
4. Place the other roasting pan on top of the ribs to create a covered area for the ribs to steam
5. Place the roasting pan on the grill and cook over the lowest heat your grill will do for about 3 hours.
6. Check the ribs after each hour to make sure the liquid has not all dissolved.  Add more beer if necessary.
7. Using a hot pad, remove the roasting pan from the grill and transfer each rib piece to the grill directly over a medium heat.
8. “Paint” the ribs with the sauce on each side, turning after about 2 or 3 minutes.
9. Serve to hungry crowd and watch as they disappear.

I hope you enjoy them!

We took a trip to Grandma and Tom’s cabin this weekend and had such a relaxing time.  I often think that my inspiration for cooking [and eating] comes from Grandma’s great food!  Every Christmas and Summer when I was a child my family would go over the river and through the woods to Grandma’s house.  Every morning there would be hearty oatmeal, fluffy pancakes, or homemade muffins baking in the oven.  We’d always sit around the table and have dinner as a family.  Grandma always (and still does) serves salad, bread, entree and at least two sides with every meal.  Needless to say I would have my fair share.  The food is always delicious and cooked with the experience only Grandma can serve up.

I’m going to write about ribs Tom (Grandma’s husband) cooked a little later but I wanted to share first about the wheat crass cocktail Grandma whipped up for me one day.  I saw a pile of wheat-grass growing (along with the rest of the HUGE garden they  have) and asked what it was for.  Grandma proceeded to show me, with great delight I tried the concotion and enjoyed the grassy flavor.  Pure wheat-grass juice was a bit too strong, but when she added apples, carrots and cucumber it brightened it up.  I’ll admit it looks a little radioactive but, I’ll assure you, it’s healthy!  Here’s what she did:

Ingredients:

• Juicer (She said you really needed a special one made for wheat-grass.)
• Two or three large handfuls of freshly cut wheat-grass
• 1/2 apple, sliced
• 1 whole carrot, sliced
• 1/2 cucumber, sliced

Directions:

1. Add all ingredients to the juicer according to manufacturer’s instructions, pour into your cup, stir and ENJOY!

I hope you enjoy it!

Rachel and I always make a big breakfast (or brunch depending on how late we sleep in) on the weekends.  Some mornings it’s waffles with fresh strawberries and real whipped cream.  Other days I’ll come up with some topping or syrup to put on whole-meal pancakes.  We love to start the weekend with a large meal and it adds a fun tradition to our week.

This past week I wanted to use some cut potatoes Rachel brought from work a while back.  I made up a delicious, simple, and easy-to-make breakfast scramble with the potatoes and some extra stuff we had around the house.  You can serve this with some fresh cut fruit, like cantaloupe or an orange.  We had ours with some homemade whole wheat bread — YUM!  Here’s what I did:

Ingredients (Serves 2):

• Small dices of 2 potatoes (or look for a bag of frozen diced potato in your grocery store)
• 3 eggs
• 1/4 red bell pepper (I had just the right amount lying around)
• 1/4 green bell pepper
• 1/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 1/2 cup diced red (or other) onion
• Dash of fine sea salt
• Fresh ground pepper

Directions:

1. Bake the potatoes in the oven on a cookie sheet lightly coated in olive oil on 400 degrees until they start to brown lightly (10 to 20 minutes)
2. In the meantime, heat up some olive oil in a skillet or frying pan on the stove over medium-low heat
3. Add the onion and cook until soft
4. Lightly whip up the eggs, salt, pepper, and cheese and add to the cooking onions
5. Scramble and stir all the ingredients as they cook on the pan to create a cheesy scrambled eggs.
6. Add the potatoes to the scramble and heat up for another minute.
7. Serve with fruit or whole-wheat toast and enjoy your day!

I hope you enjoy it!

“These are the best cupcakes I’ve ever had!”  Those were the words of my beautiful wife after devouring one of these cupcakes I just whipped up.  That says a lot.  I really value her opinion when I cook but I have to say these little delights are SO GOOD!

I started with Amy’s Strawberry cupcake recipe, modified it a little, then topped it off with a fluffy chocolate frosting recipe from recipe zaar.  I ran to the store, but forgot to grab the yogurt so I used some homemade applesauce I made a few days ago.  I also snuck in some whole-wheat flour once again with nothing but perfection as a result.  Here’s what I did:

Ingredients for Cupcake:

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter
• 1 egg
• 6 ounces Homemade Applesauce
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour (Remember I use King Arthur brand and have had trouble with other whole-wheat flours in my bread making)
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• About 20 medium sized Stahlbush Island Farm’s Frozen Strawberries (thawed slightly) (Rachel brought them from work) cut into quarters.  I used large pieces of strawberries for the texture I desired.  I wanted big juicy pieces of strawberry in each cupcake.

Ingredients for Fluffy Chocolate Frosting

• 2/3 cup cocoa
• 6 tablespoons boiling water
• 1/2 cup butter (at room temperature)
• 3 cups powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions for Cupcake:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
2. Beat sugar and butter together until fluffy
3. Add your egg and applesauce and mix thoroughly
4.  Mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl then add to your wet ingredients
5. Fold in strawberries
6. Place in lined cupcake baking tins (I made about 14, Amy says divide into 20)
7. Bake for 20 minutes or so, until toothpick comes out clean

Directions for Fluffy Chocolate Frosting:

1. Mix cocoa and boiling water thoroughly until a thick paste results
2. Beat in the butter until well combined
3. Mix in the sugar and vanilla
4. Blend until creamy and fluffy
5. Chill for at least 15 minutes before using as it starts out really runny!

Put it all together by spreading the frosting on each cupcake and topping with a half strawberry.

I hope you enjoy them!

Elise and Garrett posted a recipe for making Orange Poppy Seed Cookies and I thought they sounded good and was about to make them when I read the end of the post.  Garrett mentioned that a “novel option” was to switch out the poppy seeds for some ground coriander and replace the orange with lemon.  I did just that!  The result was a happy mouth.  They weren’t as “savory” as I thought they might be, but they were good nonetheless.

I doubled his suggested coriander, but I think that caused too much of a salty flavor.  Next time I think I’ll just use 1 teaspoon as he suggests.  I love using lemon zest in recipes so naturally the strong lemon flavor was a selling point for me.  I got the wife’s approval on these too — we ate almost half of them right after they baked!!!!  Here’s what I did:

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup of butter at room temperature
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon lemon zest
• 1 1/4 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• A pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander

Directions:

1. Beat the sugar and butter until fluffy
2. Add the egg and lemon zest
3. Mix in the flour, coriander, salt and baking soda just until combined
4. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper
5. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 12 minutes (or just until it starts to turn golden around the bottom/edge.

I hope you enjoy them!

Keep reading!  You might see the title and not give this snack another glance, but they were surprisingly better than expected.  A co-worker and I were talking about how much lettuce and kale I have growing in my garden and what to do with it all.  She mentioned that she has baked her kale before and they are almost just like crunching into a chip.  I thought, “that sounds like a good idea,” so I gave it a try.  I went out to the garden and picked a bunch of my first kale.  I had been letting it grow because I was too lazy to look up what to do with it!

I ended up making two batches (actually three — I burned the first batch :-/) because I have SO much kale.  This allowed me to try different seasonings.  On the first batch I lightly sprinkled garlic powder to create a garlic kale chip.  On the second batch I wanted to try something spicy so I lit it up with Cayenne Pepper.  They were both so delicious and easy to make.  I would make these for guests as a snack and/or conversation starter!  Rachel thought it might be fun to serve this at a sushi night.  Here’s what I did:

Ingredients:

• 5 or 6 medium size kale leaves (use any kind of kale — I had a couple different varieties)
• Powdered seasoning (I used powdered garlic for one batch and cayanne pepper for the other — my co-worker mentioned trying curry powder).
• Olive oil

Directions:

1. Rinse the kale then pat it completely dry
2. Pour a little olive oil in your (clean) hands and rub it over each kale leaf to lightly coat it
3. Spread out on a cookie sheet, do not overlap
4. Sprinkle your seasoning (or leave it plain) lightly over the kale
5. Bake on a cookie sheet in a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for about 8 to 9 minutes, or just before it starts to turn brown.

Note: You want them green and crispy.  I learned the hard way that it begins to turn brown really fast after it completely dries out in the oven.  Touch it while it is still green after about 8 minutes, then check it every minute after that.  I even went as far as pulling the crispy ones out when they finished and letting the others continue to bake for another minute or so until done.  Burned kale chips are not that great.

I hope you like them!